"We're not the only ones going through this, but that doesn't make it any easier." - Ed TaitSeldom does a day pass without Winnipeg Blue Bombers GM Kyle Walters getting bombarded with a series of questions, or posing a ton of them himself.
These are uncertain times for the 2019 Grey Cup champions and for the Canadian Football League, what with the 2020 season cancelled, with budgets being cut and with general managers treading water right now until they get some sort of guidelines from league headquarters.
And that's hardly an ideal scenario when a team is trying to build a roster for 2021. There's also the meaty matter of trying to do all that while being faced with a significant cut to the football operations budget.
"That's the real big one for us right now: trying to figure out what the staff looks like next year with the new parameters in the pay structure," began Walters. "(Head coach) Mike (O'Shea) and I have had some good discussions about how the coaching staff looks, how the scouting department looks, the equipment staff, the video staff... everybody that falls under the operations cap needs to be looked at and how we fit it in under the cap number and how we put the best group in place.
"These are hard discussions we're having, and we take it very seriously because these are people's livelihoods here. It's not just as simple as looking at a spreadsheet and figuring out how the numbers add up. When you are talking about people's livelihoods with pay cuts or position eliminations it's not a very pleasant conversation. There's no good outcome.
"It's just the way it is. We're not the only ones going through this, but that doesn't make it any easier."
Bluebombers.com recently visited with Walters for a long chat about planning during a pandemic, focusing not only on the cuts to the budget, but also on preparing for free agency, scouting talent and then preparing for the 2021 Canadian Draft.......
The rest of Ed Tait's article an be read
here!
